Flying

When it comes to reliability, there's a fundamental difference between the aviation field and just about every other walk of life. Nowhere is the chasm more visible than when you compare aviation's safety culture with what goes on in the computer industry. I know.

The Dish: Breakfast Struddle Gourmet Airfare in Detroit has reinvented the venerable apple struddle. The caterer's signature "breakfast struddle" features beaten eggs with cheese and cream and a touch of orange juice for color. To that the chef adds spicy sausage or bacon, or mixed vegetables for non-carnivores.

This small-cabin (light) jet has lower per-mile direct operating costs than contemporary models such as the dassault falcon 10 and learjet 35A, and the acquisition cost is only 20 percent of what you'd pay for a similarly performing very light jet. Plus, you can tweak a citation i to the point where it even outperforms many new aircraft costing millions more.

A chief selling point of fractional flying is its simplicity. Unlike charter customers, you don't have to bother with shopping for a flight; and unlike full owners, you don't have to worry about maintenance, storage and hiring crews. The fractional provider takes care of all that.

Has there ever been a better time to be a charter customer? Rates have declined significantly and aircraft availability is unfettered. Yet some charter operators are advising regular customers that now is the time to consider buying an aircraft, and more charter users are seeking acquisition advice on their own, according to some charter companies.

We all have plenty of operators to choose from when we need to book a charter flight. I stay loyal to the ones that do the best overall job for me. I might not fly with them often, but when I need an airplane in their part of the country, they're the ones I call.

Is your jet a business too? Or is it part of the executive compensation package? Among people who never fly privately, probably 99 out of 100 would view it only as the latter. We inside the industry, meanwhile, tend to acknowledge only the former-to a fault.

AVIATION LEGEND JIMMY DOOLITTLE made the first "blind" landing in September 1929, a little more than 80 years ago. He used an experimental Sperry gyroscope to serve as his artificial horizon and then-revolutionary radio beacons to home in on the runway.

Filet mignon is filet mignon, right? Not according to executive chef Salvatore Lano of the Air Culinaire kitchen in South Hackensack, N.J. His Signature Filet is center-cut choice USDA, seasoned and perfectly grilled.

Quote/Unquote

““CEOs go to their vacation homes just after companies report favorable news, and CEOs return to headquarters right before subsequent news is released. More good news is released when CEOs are back at work, and CEOs appear not to leave headquarters at all if a firm has adverse news to disclose. When CEOs are away from the office, stock prices behave quietly with sharply lower volatility. Volatility increases immediately when CEOs return to work.”
—David Yermack, a New York University finance professor, whose recently released study shows a correlation between when CEOs take their private jets on vacation and movements in their companies’ stock price
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